When Is the Best Time to Reach Prospects & When Should You Follow Up?

Agents today juggle tasks from sales, to marketing, to administrative follow ups. Knowing when to dial your leads shouldn’t be a task, it should be basic knowledge. Successful agencies don’t share this information, but they dial when the data says the consumer is most likely to answer, and convert to a sale. Smart agencies plan for scaling their practices, and never follow the status quo. Data and automation are key elements to success in today’s digital age.

InsideSales.com, an industry leading CRM, puts out a report regarding “The Best Practices for Lead Response Management” and NinjaQuoter reports on consumer engagement based on demographics that are of value to insurance agents, and especially marketers. Data is stable and predictable. NinjaQuoter laid its consumer engagement data next to InsideSales’s and was not surprised to see the similarities. Agents shouldn’t be surprised to know that consumers react similarly, in large numbers.

The data sets:

InsideSales has 3 years of sales and dialing data, all wrapped up into a single infographic that marketers and business analysts typically pay big money for. They give it away for free because that is the value that a vendor can provide to their users. The dialing data being reported on consists of over 15,000 unique leads, and over 100,000 call attempts from within their CRM.

NinjaQuoter is reporting on over 1,000,000 interactions of consumers on consumer facing websites hosting NinjaQuoter as their life insurance quoter. Those 1,000,000 interactions turned into over 44,000 engaged leads generated and sent to agent CRM systems.

New agents often ask, “When is the best time to call and how many days do I follow up?” Status quo agents respond with “early and often.” This is partially true, but not backed by data science. When you use the data at your fingertips, you will save yourself time and money by cutting out useless dials and time wasting activities. This freed up time allows you to focus on other areas of your business, such as learning a new marketing method. One thing that rings true to this day is when a new lead comes in, no matter the time you stop everything (your CRM should automate this activity) and dial it assuming it is within the 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. times. Calling a new lead within 5 minutes increases the qualifying and sales ratios by up to 400% vs. calling within 10 minutes.

Nic West, co-owner of Austin, Texas-based Ninja Technologies, Inc., has been in online sales and marketing for over a decade. With an impressive background in online lead generation, he serves as a source of information and best practices to some of the top insurance agents marketing online today. Nic can be reached at info@ninjaquoter.com.

About the Author

Nic West, co-owner of Austin, Texas-based Ninja Technologies, Inc., has been in online sales and marketing for over a decade. With an impressive background in online lead generation, he serves as a source of information and best practices to some of the top insurance agents marketing online today. Nic can be reached at info@ninjaquoter.com.

Comments

The question of “when to call” has been the topic of discussion for many years by insurance agents. My major philosophy has always been simply “call as soon as possible”. Sometimes a lead comes in but you are handling some other important matters and cannot drop what you are doing. If this happens, I make an attempt to call the lead as soon as possible. Many times this lead could be fictitious and you can find yourself calling a wrong number for several days until someone finally answers the phone number you are calling. You may be leaving messages on a phone that belongs to an entirely different person. The bottom line is the more time this lead which is hopefully valid searches the internet for insurance quotes or information, they will fall into the hands of multiple lead vendors which will sell the leads info 4 or 5 times per vendor. Finally this lead will simply screen each and every phone call and become too intimidated to answer the phone if it sounds like an insurance agent. The sooner you call, the more likely you can prevent this chain reaction.